Country’s Barbecue and more, Columbus, GA

Cheryl had mentioned to us when Marie and I were in Columbus in September that she would be busy on the last weekend of October, and to try not to schedule a trip down that weekend. Indeed, we had originally planned to make our visit to Providence Canyon on the 22nd, but circumstances conspired against us and we ended up buying a car that day and coming down on the 29th, when, it turned out none of our other friends in the area were free, either. Fortunately, I’ve made just about enough trips to Columbus over the years not to get completely bewildered like I used to. That’s just as well, because the directions that I had printed for this road trip only went as far as the two Alabama stops in the previous chapter. Continue reading “Country’s Barbecue and more, Columbus, GA” →

Falls View Restaurant, Forsyth GA

It’s a pretty bold claim to say that yours are the “best catfish this side of the Mississippi.” That’s an awful lot of land, you know. Fortunately, Marie and I visited a restaurant just a short hop from I-75 that might can honestly make that claim. Falls View Restaurant, which is near Forsyth and Jackson, and across from the gorgeous High Falls State Park, is one of the last places on our list of Roadfood.com-reviewed Georgia businesses to try. It’s an incredibly convenient place for interstate travelers to pull over and stretch their legs for a little while before enjoying a quite good fish supper. Incidentally, the restaurant itself claims to be in Forsyth, while both Urbanspoon and Roadfood.com call it Jackson. I’m not familiar enough with the area to judge, so I tossed a coin.

We came to the park from the east, having spent the afternoon eating and shopping around middle Georgia and just enjoying ourselves tremendously. We stopped at the park first, and spent more than an hour walking around. There’s a large pond dammed up by the parking area, but most people make their way across the state highway and onto one of the trails to go play in the waterfall.

Since I’m stating this boldly, in public, I should point out that, legally, you are not meant to swim here. There are signs all over the place telling you not to. Swimming is prohibited. But people were doing it anyway, by the dozens. There were between twenty and thirty people splashing around and cooling off in the wonderful swimming hole at the foot of the falls. Brave teen boys were on the falls themselves, sliding down into the deep water beneath them. It looked mighty dangerous, but I’d have done the same at their age. Marie and I were not dressed to get completely drenched, but we waded in up to our knees and had a terrific time.

After too-short a time in the swimming hole, we knew we had to make our way to the restaurant and get back on the road. My mother was watching the children and we did promise that we’d be home at a certain time. We found out that the climb back up to the parking area was a lot steeper than I had thought, and were pretty spent by the time we got back to the car. Turns out the restaurant was close enough that we could have just walked there instead.

Falls View was opened by John H. Wilson the week before Christmas in 1969. He sold the business to his son Tommy in 1988, and he, after a sixteen year run, sold it to the present owner, whose name is Almond, in 2004. She made some minor modifications, but otherwise has kept the place’s rustic charm and front porch rocking chairs. There’s a touch of gentle whimsy to the place; one table up front is given over to a great big catfish, “reading” a menu in some shock over its content. I told her that we found out about her restaurant from Roadfood.com, and she didn’t know what that was. I encouraged her to stop by.

This is a place that welcomes visitors of all ages, but their clientele is in the older brackets. I was reminded of Jim Stalvey’s in Covington; it is a restaurant that appealed to my parent’s generation and has never taken the time to reach out to a younger crowd. I don’t suggest that they should change anything, but, heck, that Ms. Almond had never Googled her place to see that the review at Roadfood.com was the top result suggests that they’re comfortable with their aging base. It all adds up, as it did at Stalvey’s, to a wonderfully timelost experience. They just don’t make restaurants like this anymore, where a server asks, when she takes your order, whether you want onions and pickles, and, indeed, brings you a small plate of white onions and dill and sweet pickles as an appetizer.

The catfish was indeed really good. Apparently, most of the time, they have an all you can eat special with them, but a sign on the door sadly reported that on this Saturday evening, they could not offer it, as their sources did not catch enough. But we made one of the best decisions that we made all day when Marie ordered the red snapper so that we could try a couple of different fish. It was completely wonderful, and totally outshined the celebrated catfish. Definitely try this yourselves, dear readers.

If you are traveling between Atlanta and Macon in the evening on a Wednesday through Saturday, then this is absolutely a place to consider. I’m aware that I have pointed our readers at some pretty out-of-the-way joints, but this isn’t even five minutes off the highway, and it will give you a wonderful experience celebrating a style of restaurant that is slowly fading to time, and enjoying some really terrific seafood and steak fries while you do. I’m very glad we were able to visit this place.

Manuel’s Tavern, Atlanta GA

Good grief, this place is a breath of fresh air. I visited Manuel’s Tavern maybe twice, many, many years back, and never made it a habit. More fool me. The venerable neighborhood bar, which will celebrate its 55th birthday next Saturday, is an absolute joy to visit. It’s a site absolutely radiant with Atlanta’s history, where extremely good pub food, locally-brewed beer, and, surprisingly, some of the best burgers in the city are available. I was pleased when Roadfood.com added it to their list of Georgia-reviewed restaurants, knowing that I would need to return. I was even more pleased after my visit.

Also worth smiling about: as often as I’ve had to complain about the unpleasant, paranoid propaganda of Fox News being broadcast unwelcomely at regional restaurants, Manuel’s Tavern is where Democrats eat and drink. Politics are not necessarily part and parcel of meals in the dining rooms, but of course, in the bar, guests will be drinking under photos of FDR and JFK.

Anyway, my boss, Krista, who loves this place, said that she’d like to join me when I made my way to Manuel’s. We were not able to sync schedules, so she asked me to go without her, just so long as I had her favorite burger, prepped her way.

Manuel’s was originally the site of a delicatessen called Harry’s. Manuel Maloof bought it in 1956, brought his brother Robert on board to help run it, expanded it into the businesses on either side and created one of Atlanta’s most beloved neighborhood joints. There seems to be room inside for hundreds, with teeny little corridors leading into rooms that guests might never know were there.

The walls are a living history lesson of the city. In 1956, the Braves had not yet relocated from Milwaukee. You can see the lineups of the 1956 and 1958 AAA Crackers on one wall instead. Newspaper stories by Ron Hudspeth relate the days when Manuel spent as CEO of DeKalb County. Any guest could spend hours studying all the memorabilia and writings posted along the dark wood paneling.

Manuel’s two best-selling burgers are the McCloskey Burger – a half-pound patty with lettuce and tomatoes – and the J.J. Special, served with two cheeses and onions along with a heap of wonderful steak fries and some onion rings. Normally, J.J. Specials are served on wheat toast, but I was instructed to have one on a Kaiser roll. It was terrific. That these burgers fly under everybody’s radar is criminal; they are, flatly, among the very best burgers in the city. Along with a pint of Athens’ wonderful Terrapin pale ale, it was a really nice lunch.

While families are welcome in Manuel’s, the clientele tends to skew older and the conversations flesh out the remarkable sense found here of the city’s stories in a nutshell. Even as Atlanta razes and wrecks its history and old, beloved businesses fail – the Atlanta Book Company, right across the street, shuttered earlier this month – the oral history of the city is being retold at Manuel’s tables. I raised my eyes from my novel – Gregory Mcdonald again – as four older men talked about the days when Paul Newman would race at Road Atlanta. If you’re a local, then as your eyes read that line, you probably remembered the old Road Atlanta logo from T-shirts you had not seen in three decades.

This is a place where stories are told, and as new customers and families find the place, where new ones will be written. I was too drunk, too young and too stupid to enjoy Manuel’s when I was 22. Today, I love it more than I can express. Fellows, we all need to meet here soon and plan to spend a long and wonderful happy evening.

Update (3/11/13): Heard the good word last week that Manuel’s is going smoke-free in 2014. That’s terrific news.

Jim Stalvey’s, Covington GA

I had not realized quite how much attention that I have been paying to Urbanspoon until I looked up Jim Stalvey’s Restaurant, noted the surprisingly low user ranking (44%, if I recall, the morning that we visited), and asked myself why on earth we were going to head out that way. The answer, of course, was that the venerable steakhouse is one of those with a glowing review at Roadfood.com and we intend to hit (almost) all of the ones in Georgia, and so we just had to brave that 44% and hope for the best. It worked out just fine. 56% of the people who voted for that restaurant were quite spectacularly wrong. If you’re looking for a good steak, you need to head out to Newton County and then log on to Urbanspoon and give that ranking a boost.

The building is a very old one, sort of classic suburban family restaurant design, and easy to overlook among the sprawl of US 278. I asked about it, wondering whether it might have once been a Ponderosa or something like that. It was apparently built in the early 1960s as the home of a restaurant called Bock & Kid. Jim Stalvey, a restaurateur from the north Georgia town of Rome, had already moved to Covington and opened a place in town with the horrible name of The Crest. In 1980, he moved into this site with a business called The Prado. In time, the Prado evolved into Stalvey’s Restaurant and Lounge.

Stalvey has continued to open and operate restaurants along this leg of I-20, though the last few years have not been kind to them. At the end of 2005, one of his websites – not updated since then – boasted that he and his company ran seven. Presently, I count just four: Stalvey’s, a fast food place called Quik Chick, and two Butcher’s Block delis. Perhaps one day, we might visit the others. If they are as good as the main restaurant, they’re worth the trip.

The four of us drove out to Covington with Neal some three Saturdays back. Covington has always been one of those towns that we pass through without stopping; I’ve been curious what else might be out here.

The must-try items at Stalvey’s are said to include the onion rings and the fried cauliflower. I had the former and thought they were completely delicious. Happily, they were available as a side for my steak and not just as a more expensive appetizer. The steak was really wonderful. I had a small six-ounce sirloin, priced right at just $8.99. It was not as good as Marie’s own grilling at her best, but better than many, many steaks that I have ordered in restaurants in the past.

Marie also had a steak – the filet was available as a special, also for $8.99 – and was very pleased with it. Neal had the chicken livers and really enjoyed them. He said they were not quite as good as the ones at Doug’s Place in Emerson – those are the gold standard – but still very good. I’m glad that we came by for lunch and were able to enjoy them. Apparently, if I understand it correctly, the restaurant offers both steaks and a traditional southern meat-and-two menu, on a white board, during lunch hours, but in the evenings, it’s all about either steak or ribs. The smokehouse is in front of the restaurant, but barbecue is only offered in the evenings.

Everything that we had tasted incredibly fresh and wonderful; the only slightly bum note came with the French dressing that Marie had with her salad and did not enjoy. Happily, the salad was made with such incredibly fresh veggies – these cucumbers are just to die for – that it did not need dressing at all.

Now, admittedly, Urbanspoon is a very poor judge of traditional restaurants like this. Its more prolific users seem to be more interested in the hot new joints in town, eating where everybody else eats, and often enjoying food that, as Calvin Trillin terms it, is always served on a bed of something else. The very low positive rating for Stalvey’s probably indicates a period of inconsistency for this restaurant. What surprises me more, however, is that only 26 people had rated it at all. This is a restaurant that more people should talk about. If you can get a better steak for this price, with sides and vegetables this good, anywhere for forty miles, I’ll be stunned.

Peachtree Cafe at Lane Southern Orchards, Ft. Valley GA

We are achingly close to a full set of the Georgia restaurants reviewed at Roadfood.com. One on their list had long confused me a little about when best to stop by for a visit. It’s Lane Southern Orchards, a gigantic agribusiness about fifteen miles south of Macon near the town of Fort Valley. I wasn’t entirely sure what would be good to eat here other than fresh peaches. Turns out that they do have a cafeteria, so we just needed to wait for a trip down to the coast to visit Marie’s mother and her father that coincided with our state’s peach season, and we could mark it off our list. Continue reading “Peachtree Cafe at Lane Southern Orchards, Ft. Valley GA” →

Fat Matt’s Rib Shack, Atlanta GA

Fat Matt’s is one of those places that is so small and so popular that I have never been a regular. I really don’t enjoy the challenge of parking at a place where it is such a chore to either get in or get out, and there have been more occasions in the past where I had planned to eat there, been discouraged and left than there have actual instances of me sitting down to some food and, most evenings, live blues. This is a pretty good place to eat, though. Sometimes, that discouragement that I’ve felt has bubbled into serious aggravation that the fates were against me.

For many years, they operated a second business in the building next door. Fat Matt’s Chicken Shack is now closed, but for a good while there, you could enjoy some of the best fried chicken in Atlanta. The only plus side to it shuttering is that there are one or two extra parking spaces available now.

Well, lines out the door are usually not a green flag for me to come eat, and indeed it had been many years since we’d stopped by for some food. Early last month, however, Roadfood.com added a couple more places to their small library of Georgia restaurants. So Marie and I buckled up the baby, promised my daughter a bowl of stew, and asked David to come along and eat with us. We arrived at 11.30 on a Saturday, right as they opened. There was one space available to park – behind the old Chicken Shack – and a line out the door. There’s always a line out the door.

The review at Roadfood.com suggests that the building once housed a Krispy Kreme. It is certainly an old one, and it doesn’t seat very many, even with a patio. When there’s a band playing, it is packed and loud and sweaty and all kinds of wonderful, if you enjoy a slab of very good ribs in the company of lots of strangers guzzling beer.

How Fat Matt’s manages to make such tasty barbecue is a genuine mystery, as they roast over charcoal rather than wood. The meat is moist – perhaps overly so, as it comes presauced with their tangy red tomato-based mixture – and flavorful, but that unmistakable smoked wood taste that informs the best barbecue is not present here. For many years, fans have been marveling at how this place can break whatever rules that people hold dearest about barbecue so casually and still turn out such tasty food.

For my part, while the chopped pork is very good despite not being what I’m usually looking for in barbecue, I really wish they would not presauce it. I’d love to try it dry one day. The Brunswick stew is pretty good, but not among any of our favorites. The rum baked beans are just terrific, though. There’s just enough of a hint of rum to be noticeable, and they make an excellent accompaniment to the meat. I really love these! Honestly, the only thing this place does that I cannot get behind is serving up boring old Lay’s potato chips. If they must offer chips from a bag, I wish that they were Golden Flake brand.

After lunch, we drove the hop and skip – it’s not even an “and jump” away – over to Grindhouse Killer Burgers for dessert. David wanted to try one of these burgers that everybody’s talking about and pronounced it pretty good, while the rest of us enjoyed some malts. Marie had already made the bold claim that the chocolate malt here is one of the very best in the city. I had a vanilla and, honestly, it was pretty darn good, but not even close to being as good as the amazing malts at Chapman Drugs.

There’s a heck of a lot of good eating within walking distance on this leg of Piedmont and Cheshire Bridge. I’m curious to try Sheik Burritos some day soon. I’ll probably have to follow that up with a malt from Grindhouse as well.

Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand, Atlanta GA

When Marie and our friend Victoria were each in the later stages of their respective pregnancies, we met up near their new apartment in the East Atlanta neighborhood for ice cream at Morelli’s, and resolved to get together again after our babies were born. Victoria and James were raving then about Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand, a collaboration between Delia Champion, who started our city’s much-loved Flying Biscuit Cafe, and Molly Gunn, who I understand co-owns The Porter. Weeks went by, babies were born and I started getting impatient about when the heck we were going to get together so’s I could try one of these dogs. Or slingers, as the restaurant would like to term them.

Make no mistake, though. These may be called slingers or chicken sausages, but they are definitely from the same mold as hot dogs. This is a good thing, as Marie and I certainly love good hot dogs. The new take on them here is incredibly neat and fun and very tasty. Champion and Gunn are using buns baked by the popular Holeman & Finch and locally-sourced, organically-grown chickens for their meat. The results are just a little different from even the best hot dog places in town – America’s Top Dog, Barker’s, Brandi’s – and make for a very interesting and unique taste. Plus, they’re open absurdly late. Like four in the morning late. If I lived in that neighborhood, they’d be seeing me pretty frequently in the middle of the night!

The one thing about Delia’s that does not please me is the lack of seating. There’s only a small indoor area with air conditioning to place orders, and six picnic tables outside to eat. As Atlanta enters its utterly miserable summer, this is going to keep us from paying them another visit for a few months. This is a real shame, because the food is quite wonderful.

Acting like I had not eaten anything in a month, I ordered both a Naked Slinger – far from naked, it was the sausage with their “comeback” sauce and a little of the firey five-pepper mustard – and their signature Hot Mess, a slinger buried under melted cheese, chili and jalapenos. This really is too messy a thing to eat in polite company, but somehow I avoided spilling any of it on Victoria and James’s couch.

Honestly, though, the sausage is so good that it doesn’t need all the crazy toppings. I really preferred the Naked Slinger, and thought that the meat’s flavor was really brought out by the mustard. Meanwhile, my daughter enjoyed eating the chicken as traditional sliders, and Marie had the Italian Stallion, which has the slinger served with onions, peppers, mozzarella and marinara sauce. Everything was really quite excellent.

I just amused myself, wondering whether the slinger could turn into an iconic Atlanta variety of dog, just like half-smokes are in Washington. I wish I had a TARDIS so I could pop forward a few decades and check that out.